The Swedish Brood War Initiative

On the most recent meeting we decided to do the following:

Go in as main sponsor for the ICCUP Main Event ($250 already transfered)
Organize a team league to take the place of Gambit's cup (with the help from additional sponsors and team fees: $1000)
Organize 2 smaller tours ($50 winner takes it all style)
Organize a LAN in Gothenburg to promote SBWI ($25+)

Prologue
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Necessary Reading
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Why would the Swedish Government give us money? I think this is a scam!
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Chairman (leader): Jaevlaterran
Treasurer (economy): TehRei + Show Spoiler +
PR (marketing): Epoxide
Regional Administrator of Gothenburg (leader in Gothenburg): Abjurer
Senior web designer: Mutisk
Junior web designer: vOddy

Step 1: Register at our online database! Just click the link below:
Online Registration for Swedish NON-Members

Step 2: Pay the members fee of 50 kr (or more if you like)/ year to our organization account (the account is subject to Swedish Government scrutiny): it is a plusgiro with the number 1637966-1. When paying to a plusgiro you can choose to include a message to the receiver instead of OCR number. Here we need you to write your name so that we can see who is paying.

Step 3: You get a welcome text message (sms) from the Chairman who assigns you to a region where your events will be held based on the information you filled in about your residence. After that you will get text messages to your phone whenever something is happening in your area from your Regional Administrator. At the moment there are two regions: Stockholm and Gothenburg. Abjurer is RA of Gothenburg and Jaevlaterran is RA of Stockholm. If you wish to be a member of our skype group or our facebook group you just add "jaevlaterran" on skype or apply for the facebook group, and you will be accepted into them both.

(a foreign member is a donor who will get information about what is going on that non-members do not receive, and you also have the possibility to contact us with your wishes on what you want us to do with our money etc. it is a way for foreigners to participate in this project):

Donate to our Paypal account swedish.brood.war.initiative@gmail.com.

If you wish to be acredited for your donation; please write your TL ID in the message. If you also want to participate in the organization you may apply for our facebook group or skype group by adding "jaevlaterran" on skype.

The board that was elected:
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We decided on:
1.
The voting resulted in the alternative being "One big and several small tourneys" winning. We will host our own (not sponsor) flagship 1v1 tournament that will be a returning event if successful. Regarding the smaller ones they will be some "for fun tours" and some more serious types of BW that just haven't got the sponsors to get bigger tours. Exactly what type of tours will be revealed as they are organized but I can spoiler a little about them. We discussed tours involving some new maps, 2v2, team melee and Tandem Starcraft.

2. Sponsoring ISL4
As a result of the drama surrounding the organization of the SBWI NW we have decided not to primarily focus on sponsoring events where we can not fully control the organization. ISL4 is therefore not a priority (our own tours will be instead) but is left as a possibility depending on funds.

3. Website
We have decided to get a proper website with all information on etc. to further improve our credability and organization. Mutisk will lead the web design team consisting of himself and vOddy. They are both studying web design and Mutisk will design this website as his final project in one course. Jaevlaterran has a server-computer that will work as the website's sever. Hopefully we can make this website available in mutliple languages (English, Russian most likely).

4. We will host a Brood Bar in Stockholm for watching the SSL finals at our new premise.

We have donated our money to the winners of the SBWI Nation Wars via our paypal account.

Now foreign members can sign up to donate, and I have rewritten the intro so that signing up is even easier. Stockholm has a 12 hour Brood Bar Marathon tomorrow watching all the SBWI Nation Wars games from this weekend.

SBWI's first sponsorship "SBWI Nation Wars" has now been launched in cooperation with LRM)Game.

We now have the money: 5140 kr = $785.25 that the Swedish gov. donates.
I've gotten an answer from Dreamhack which looks open-minded and clearly has some potential to it.
I will write more when I have more time.

The members fee is 50 kr a year, but donating more is always welcome. I have myself tried this out by paying the members fee today. I noticed that if you pay with an online bank, your bank will in fact verify the account holder with the lines: "F120165-6, sbwi + my real name". You can thereby check that the SBWI's non-profit organization number "F120165-6", is the same as in the picture of the legal document proving our legitimacy below. This means that the account is not private. Since I'm the chairman of SBWI, my real name is listed too.

Account info for paying from a Swedish bank:
Members fee: minimum 50 kr/year
Plusgirokonto: 1637966-1
Instead of OCR-number you need to WRITE YOUR FULL NAME. Otherwise I have no way of knowing who's paid or not.
(Foreign Members: more information shortly.)

I just got the bank account approved! Now I will register our members in the SveRok database online so SveRok knows how much to pay us. Next update is: I've got the money.

Where we are right now: we are registered as a gaming organization and can now apply for a special type of bank account. This bank account is in practice owned by the Swedish government to assure that what we do is non-profit and according to the the premisses of our admission. I sent in the bank papers for that account last week, since we need to have one to get the money from the state. Once the account is up, all we do is wait another 1-2 weeks for the money to roll in. Then we party.

Channel on ICCUP: "op SBWI"
Practicing for all D-ranks or unranked on Sundays at 13:00 CET - whenever people stop.

We're looking for two Regional Administrators
Are you interested in being in charge of the activities in your area? Hosting events like Brood Bar(watching BW and drinking beer), LAN-parties or other events? PM me. I need one RA in Gothenburg and one in Malmo. All members will be assigned to an area depending on where they live. Their respective RA will be given contact information to his area's members to ensure that they will be notified of any events going on. New members will also easily get in touch with their area's BW-fans through this. My thought is like this:

1. New members PM me
2. I sign them up vOdToasT
3. I give their contact information to the RA
4. They are notified of local events, fans, players etc.

I have cleaned up the thread so that it is easier to navigate for newcomers. I've also uploaded a photo of our admission papers

I just got all the papers I've been waiting for, from the Swedish Gov. Funding Org. They have accepted SBWI. This means that they will give us money as soon as we have a bank account connected to the SBWI. The papers for getting an organization-bound bank account were included with the rest of the papers. I'll fill them out tomorrow and send them to a bank. The admission papers look pretty fancy maybe I can upload photo.

So, I just got a call from the Swedish Government Funding Organization about if we need to register as an online organization (a lot of extra work and a different set of rules) or if we could just be a normal one. Apparently their vacation is over. She just said that if we didn't want to be an online organization, we could just be a normal one. She then said she'd send me the certificate proving that we are in fact legitimate. I'll post a photo when I get it. They tend to look pretty fancy^^.

First of all I've had the standard vacation here in Sweden of June-August just like the Swedish Government Funding Organization so everyone just chill. During this time of year bureaucracy simply couldn't go slower. The latest I've gotten from the Swedish Government is that they don't like us registering as a normal organization. They want us to register as an online organization instead, which to be honest is what we are. The problem that I hoped to avoid about this is that being an online organization is a little bit more work. Here is a quote from the Swedish
Government Funding Organization's website (translated by me, here is the Source) on what we need to fix before we're accepted as an online organization:

1. The Organization needs to have a working website with rules, information, possibility for members to register, the board listed and the accountant as well (all elected last meeting) and the protocol from the founding meeting.

2. The chairman and the cashier need to watch two short instructional movies and answer a few check box questions about them.

3. The organization needs to have a plan for how its operations and the democratic aspect will be handled.

After that money starts flowing in according to their last email.

I will host BB on my roof terrace if weather allows otherwise inside. Beer will be served (bring cash) at nice round numbers (any excess goes to BW). If you want to attend, make sure to PM, call, text, email or just tell me beforehand. Maybe I'll take a pic or two to tease the rest of the world. (It was awesome.)

This is a great day. The papers have been filed and we are set to have a registered organization as soon as we are accepted by the Swedish government funding organization. All went super smooth with healthy discussion and a lot of ideas, fighting spirit and commitment. I told you so before, and am now proud to say that this is really happening. The Swedish Brood War Initiative has now been founded.

I've started the registration process, meaning the process where I register our real names etc. for the organization we get money from. This is of course the process where everyone expects to loose a significant amount of the members, since this is the true sign of actually committing. Let's prove that we are ready to commit!

As always, taxes come in somewhere when an organization wants to host events with prize polls. Apparently there is a rule that if it is under 1000 SEK ($150) per receiving person a year, the organization won't need to pay any taxes on the money they give away. If it were to be over $150, it gets quite tricky. I'm planning on giving the swedish tax department a call about this during the week to find out more.

Whether or not, unseen taxes would arise because of the receiver being potentially foreign I, at the moment don't know anything about and will check this. Nothing points at this, but I wouldn't be surprised. Since Sweden loves its taxes, these might be potentially higher than we'd like if we were to choose to host events with higher prize polls. It is ALL legal though, it just has to be bookkept in a much more strict fashion, and the taxes will have to be paid. This makes for some discussion on what type of events to spend our money on. We could potentially host many tax free events, with smaller prize polls, or a larger one with taxes. This will be decided on the founding meeting.

Since this restriction is per person, each year, I also need to double check that a person can win multiple times each year if we were to host multiple smaller events. This is more or less implied in what I've read so far, but not said outright. Another interesting fact here is that by this system, guaranteeing prizes for the top players that didn't win the tournament (runner up or top 5) might be "cheaper" since they could conveniently be paid with tax free money. So I guess our tournaments might be a little socialist style after all, since paying more people less is cheaper for the organization than paying one or two people larger sums of money. But as previously said, it seems to be a matter of taste for SBWI and will be decided by our members.

The taxes will of course have to be paid by the SBWI, not the winner! If we decide to go for the taxated choice here with larger prize polls, we'll just pay the taxes and that'll be that, so there's nothing to be scared of here. My interest here lies primarily in whether or not it will be worth paying the taxes to host larger events. Once I get some actual numbers, we can weigh this on our founding meeting. If people have opinions, you can write that in the thread, and they will be presented on our founding meeting even if the person isn't a member. This affects us all, as in how we want to enjoy BW tournaments.

I've checked this now and foreigners won't give the organization any extra funding from the state, however if you want to be a member anyways, the only thing you need to do is pay $7:50 each year and sign up here. This is not as effective as those getting funding from the state, but it might be an easy way to know that your money doesn't become part of corruption (These organizations are checked now and then obviously, and there is always an accountant with each organization). It would be illegal for any member to simply take the money.

I will post the account to which the money should be sent, when the account has been approved. It will be a special type of account, for non profitable organizations. These are also required by Swedish law, not to be used for individual gain or profit, and under bank scrutiny and heavy restrictions for anyone within the organization (outsiders can obviously not withdraw from it) to withdraw money. It must be clearly documented so that the members of the organization can check to see what their money has been used for as well, according to law. This will only have positive effects on the SBWI since we will be a legit organization with non profitable goals.

When money starts rolling in, I will post a complete budget, here on TL. There every single dollar's whereabouts and origin (donor) will be shown unless stated otherwise by the donor. Anonymous donations are fine, since they will add money (not a problem) which is clearly easy to document as an anonymous donor, not interfering with the credibility of others' money. Otherwise donations with a name (TL account will do) make sure you can see that your money is an actual part of the whole. This way the donors can also make sure, that their money gets put to the use, it was intended for.

Apparently there is an extra funding called Project funding that we could apply for as well. It's typically a $100-$200 extra that if we have a good project (tournament) we might get it. It seems to be hard to get it, but we might as well apply.

Apparently 60% of the organization must be max 25 years old. I think we can manage this.

Jaevlaterran
Abjurer
Prowler
Thepopularityofpie
Blixten1
NordaN
mEATshEILd
Kassploj
TehRei
OminouS
Holgerius
Kairo
Boundz(DarKo)
drainX
cichli
SunTzuEU
Amazonic
Animzor
Skeggaba
Tadah
Hetairoi
Ult_hAxX
Elroi
Nilo
Zoler
kevva
ICanFlyLow
Rezzan
AbsO
Adventurekid
vOdToasT
epoxide
gene(S)is
Mutisk

Since Barcraft seems to be stolen, I thought I'd call it Brood Bar. There is a possibility to go watch BW with other members in the Gothenburg and Stockholm areas. If you wish to be notified about events in your local area, you need to be a member. Your Regional Administrator (Abjurer for Gothenburg and Jaevlaterran for Stockholm) will automatically contact you when there is an event coming up. To simply attend an event, one does not need to be a member, but the ultimate decision is up to the Regional Administrator. An example might be when having Brood Bar at a real pub (not necessary to be a member) vs. in someones home (members only).

I own a projector and a pretty big screen.
My apartment has a roof terrace (with view over Stockholm ofc^^) so we can watch it outside if it's in the summer (room for at least 20 people). Kinda like how we do with soccer in many countries, watching it outside and having a few cold ones. If you wanna come to watch it and aren't Swedish that's obviously fine. As long as you're a BW fan that's all that matters. Another important note is that most bars wouldn't' mind getting 40 extra guests watching a BW game. Maybe we can even establish a good relationship to a bar, so that we could have reoccurring events at the same place.

A good point by Xiphos that I hadn't thought about is using the SC2 Barcraft community to signal I might host Brood Bar since some of them might be interested as well. I became a member of the Facebook community for Barcraft in Sweden a while ago, hoping it would be any BW. I haven't seen any, but advertising there might be a good idea anyhow.

If we host this, there is something called Travel funding, that we could apply for. It's some money to help pay for the travel and we could get at least $15 per traveling member. I guess it is something at least.

Update 22/4-13: We have now had several Brood Bars.